The progressive community lost a spiritual leader two weeks ago with the tragic death in a car accident of Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank. Wolfe-Blank, of the Congregation Eitz Or, was also schooled in Zen Buddhism and led a "network of Jewish renewal communities that seeks to draw on ancient wisdom to act on contemporary issues." In a city where it's still permissible in some lefty/liberal circles to be openly anti-Semitic, we need more voices like his, not fewer.--Geov Parrish

The Rev. Jesse Jackson popped into town last week to visit Boeing CEO Phil Condit, ostensibly to discuss racial discrimination at Boeing. Boeing is the target of several lawsuits by long-term employees who claim racial discrimination by Boeing management. Yet Jackson's visit turned into a photo-op for Jackson, who recently seems to be on a crusade to become a mainstream political contender, instead of pushing for real social change. After talking with Jackson, Condit happily shirked all responsibility for racial discrimination at Boeing by claiming that he had inherited the problem from the previous CEO, Frank Schrontz. In return, Jackson carefully repeated the Boeing line--that the "real enemy" is Airbus. This left several African-American Boeing workers scratching their heads and wondering why Jackson even bothered to make the trip, since it will obviously have little lasting impact on Boeing policy. Jackson also used the visit as an opportunity to promote his political machinery, the Rainbow Coalition/PUSH, whose main activity these days is to encourage African-Americans to buy stock in 25 local corporations, then raise a ruckus at their annual shareholders meetings. Besides the fact that buying stock right now is risky and out of the economic range of most folks, surely there must be more direct ways to send a message to corporations about their discriminatory hiring and promotional practices ... after all, it isn't shareholders who are challenging Boeing on this issue; it's 43 African-American and Native American employees who are suing Boeing in court. They're taking enormous financial and emotional risks right now and deserve more support than just a little pat on the head from a man on his way to "bigger and better things." --Maria Tomchick

Frightening thought of the week: with the extraordinarily rapid advances in the science of cloning (the latest: a cow), commercial applications can't be far behind. And a commercial application that some companies would pay generous bucks for is the cloning of endangered species. Why is this lucrative? Whip out only a handful of lookalikes (under the WTO/MAI-weakened Endangered Species Act) and suddenly there are enough spotted owls, sea turtles, speckled furballs, or whatever to proceed with whichever habitat outrage the corporation wants to perpetrate. If your activity then kills off the habitat, clones and all? Make s'more. It's just a little DNA pattern, no one will ever know the difference, right? Creepy. This is a very First World solution, of course; in equatorial countries, where a majority of extinctions are taking place, the time-tested method of paying off corrupt governments is probably still cheaper.-G.P.

In another bizarre illustration of how basic research in the sciences is influenced by capitalism, NASA officials are giddy over the discovery of billions of tons of ice on the moon. Evidently, ice means water, which would make colonization of the moon more economically feasible. Yes, let me repeat that: "colonization of the moon." We're not talking about boldly going where no one has gone before, or simply exploring strange new worlds. The discovery of ice brings elites here on earth one step closer to abandoning our nearly depleted planet in search of opportunities for resource-extraction on nearby planets. Anything that makes that process cheaper is a major discovery. As Ed Weiler, a space scientist at NASA, said: "I think before we colonize to Mars, we need to colonize the moon for practice, so from that perspective, this is a major discovery." Indeed. But shouldn't we solve a few problems closer to home first?--M.T.

Missing from our coverage last week of the U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and alleged terrorist training camps in Afghanistan is the fact that both of these acts were direct violations of international law. As many foreign analysts have pointed out, there are established international legal procedures for investigating suspected chemical weapons plants via the U.N. (which are already being used in Iraq). This will give fuel to Sudan's case against the U.S. at the World Court. Also, the bombing of the Afghani camps was a violation of international prohibitions against assassination. Last week, top U.S. military and intelligence advisors said for the first time, in a hearing before a group of 25 senators, that they had hoped Osama bin Laden would be killed in the missile attack. Prior to that admission, the U.S. government had denied any attempt to target and assassinate bin Laden, saying that the attack on the Afghani camps was aimed at destroying his "terrorist network." Of course, bin Laden won't sue, but what message does this send to other nations about international law?--M.T.

Other victims of the global recession--besides resource-rich and debt-plagued nations like Russia, Indonesia, and Venzuela--are American farmers. With the severe drop in commodity prices, grain prices have also plummeted, primarily because people in Russia and southeast Asia can't afford to buy our food (they're just doing without). The biggest losers here in the U.S. are the handful of small family farmers who haven't sold their land to syndicates or large agricultural combines. Because they operate on smaller profit margins and rely on credit to carry them through years when they don't make a profit, many small farmers will be unable to borrow enough to make it through this crisis. Watch for more bankruptcies, farm sales, and "farm aid" benefits--similar to what we saw in the 1980s during the Reagan years, when banks foreclosed on large numbers of family farms. Also, be prepared for agricultural megacorporations to use the plight of smaller farmers as a reason to beg Congress for more handouts in the form of additional price supports--which could eventually add up to $5.6 billion in aid. Obviously, free markets and food production just don't mix.--M.T.